Alaskan Sea-Duction: Friday Harbor to Seattle

The trip from Friday Harbor to Seattle was hot. I almost stripped naked. We had 3 container ships pass us doing 20kts!. They put out a HUGH wake. We tried to cross one and it rocked ASD bad. Scared us.

But by the time we made it to Shilshole Marina a north wind popped up and the harbor master assigned me 2 slips I could not get into because to the wind. He ended up putting us on a "T" dock. Should have requested that in the first place.

We departed early and headed up the throat of the devil, aka Ballard Lock. We had to wait for 2 hours to get into the lock. About 20 boats piled up behind me with some pushing forward trying to get ahead of the line.

When we were told to enter, all large boats first. That would be me, so we entered. Kay tossed the line up to the line handlers. Then we had 2 boats raft to us. The lift was only about 29-30 feet. No worries, the Columbia River was much larger and no line handlers.

Don't know what I was thinking. Our fenders had covers on them. The covered caught on the rock wall. One was ripped off and went forward. Nice folks caught it for us. Then we had a fender blow up!! Crap. I had to use my feet to push the boat away from the wall. I am now convinced the Columbia is much easier.

We docked at Miller and Miller Boatyard. Very friendly folks. I backed in. Why? So I can watch the zoo at the lock! This so much fun watching all these boats doing the "Boat Dance!" Boats everywhere.

Then I saw the sister ship to ASD. It was a Camargue "Star Weird!" Cool I could get him to respond to my hails. Oh well.

Once we are done here, it is a 3 day travel back to the Columbia River.